Beat Street (1984) was the second mainstream hip hop dramatic feature film, following Breakin'. It is set in New York City during the rise in the popularity of hip hop culture in the early 1980s. The project began when journalist Steven Hager began writing visiting the South Bronx to document break dancing, graffiti art and rap music in the early 1980s. Hager sold his script to Harry Belafonte.

Notable performances include a song by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, breakdance battles between the New York City Breakers and the Rock Steady Crew, and cameos by beatboxer Doug E. Fresh, Richard Lee Sisco, and the Treacherous Three.

The movie was the east coast answer to Breakin' , which displayed the East Coast style of break dancing, DJing, and graffiti with a mild social undertone. Some of the plotline was based on the graffiti documentary Style Wars. Most visibly, the villain character Spit in Beat Street was lifted from the way the real-life graffiti artist Cap was portrayed in Style Wars.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Street